Wealthy countries met global climate finance goal two years late, OECD says

Brussels : Developed countries achieved their pledge to provide $100 billion to help poorer countries cope with climate change in 2022, the OECD said on Wednesday, confirming the target was met two years late.

In 2009, developed countries promised that from 2020 they would transfer $100 billion a year to poorer nations buckling under the costs of worsening climate change-fuelled disasters.

They provided $115.9 billion in climate finance in 2022, meeting the goal for the first time, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in a report. The total also includes private finance mobilised by public funds.

The $100 billion is far less than the trillions developing countries need to invest in clean energy fast enough to meet climate goals, and protect their societies from extreme weather and rising seas.

But the missed target has become politically symbolic, stoking mistrust between nations at recent UN climate talks, as some developing countries argue they cannot make more ambitious commitments to tackle climate change if the world’s economic powers do not deliver promised financial support.

Finance will be the central topic at this year’s UN COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November. The main task will be to set a new target for climate finance for developing countries, to replace the $100 billion goal after 2025.

Already, nations are divided over the new target.

The European Union, currently the world’s biggest provider of climate finance, is among the wealthy nations demanding that more countries pay towards the new goal – including large emerging economies and those with high CO2 emissions and per-capita wealth, like China and Middle Eastern states.

China, now the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, has firmly opposed this in past UN climate talks.

China and most other countries are not currently obliged to contribute towards UN climate finance goals. The list of countries obliged to contribute – which has not been updated since 1992 – includes around two dozen countries that had already become industrialised decades ago.